Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments 2011/Concept

Wiki Loves Monuments is a public photo contest around monuments, organized by Wikimedia chapters. In September 2011 it will be organized in several European countries. The contest is organized in a federative fashion, so the details on a national level might differ from country to country. The basic concept is that people are invited to upload images of monumental objects under a free license for usage on Wikipedia. We want to try to get complete lists of these monuments on Wikipedia, including photos - giving a great and unique overview of the cultural heritage in a country.

The contest is organized in a federative fashion. That means that each participating group/chapter organizes their own contest, and each of these contests is part of a bigger, European, contest. Each organizing group has a lot of freedom in how to organize it exactly in their own territory (to make the contests compatible with each other there are some general rules we would like to keep constant), but there are several recommendations on this page which you might want to consider, mainly based on last years experiences in the Netherlands.

That does not mean you're out there all by yourself! If we can help each other, we should - but it is impossible to organize everything centrally because of the huge workload and the country specificities.

The exact rules for the national contests will have to be laid out by the organization for each country in their local language. There are some basic principles we should all adhere to and there are some recommendations.

Requirements

The contest runs from 1 until 30 September 2011.

The jury result should be ready by a certain deadline (probably early or in the middle of November) - exact date to be determined in May.

All participating photos should be made by participants and licensed under a free Creative Commons license acceptable on Wikimedia Commons.

There will have to be some kind of structured lists of admissible monuments. These lists will need to contain, at the start of the contest, at least an identifier for each entry and a way to locate the object (i.e. address and/or geo-coordinates). For more information about these lists, see #Object lists

There will be some kind of awards for the best participating photo in each country.

As mentioned before, all national contests are expected to run their own organization. Of course some things can be coordinated, but it would be unfair to give the impression that others will take over this from you. There are some basic things that each country has to take care of one way or the other. These are the most important:

Partners will be important to run the contest. Basically three types of partners can be imagined:

Governmental partner for the structured data: you will need to compile lists of monuments, and it is very helpful if the government can provide their official list with as much detail as possible. Their cooperation can make the project extra useful because people will most likely find mistakes in the original lists that can be corrected.

Publicity partners: partners that can help you with getting the word out, reaching specific audiences and media. Their cooperation can give you credibility.

Sponsors: They can provide you with awards and possibly cover some of the costs of the event. Whether this is required probably depends on the specific local situation.

If you have trouble with contacting the partners or the right people, please get in touch with Maarten, he might be able to help you through our European partners!

Make sure the jury is a bit diverse. For the rest, a lot of freedom. Mix of photographers and wikimedians is advisable. Try to get them in real life together in one room to make the final decisions, but before that, some preparatory work has to be done to get the selection to some 100 images.

Most technical facilities will become available in a centralized fashion. Details will be worked out later, this is just to give you an impression. Work on this will only start later, as there is no need to have this finished in a very early stage. Common theme here is keep it simple. For example, no multiple login layers.

Please make sure to involve the Wikimedia community heavily in this project. You will need all their help you can get on completing the lists and correcting the mistakes in them. Try to involve them in other aspects too, to increase their continued support. A good approach is to set up a coordination page on the wiki where the lists are located, and to give continuous feedback on completeness and quality, and to show that something is happening with the data.

Some steps will require international coordination and besides that there is a whole lot to learn from each other. Therefore, please communicate, communicate, communicate! There is an international mailing list you can subscribe to to stay up to date and share your experiences and problems. That is also a great way to get some help.

Lodewijk and Maarten were responsible for the Wiki Loves Monuments organization in 2010 in the Netherlands, and are willing to join in in a brainstorm session (online or in real life) to help you figure out the problems and potential solutions. That might be an effective way to get the community together in one place and exchange some real experiences.

At the end of March, we can do some brainstorming perhaps at the Chapters Meeting, but we think it is more important to have a real dedicated meeting in May, where all attending groups can participate and we can coordinate the things that need to be coordinated like European jury etc. More information to follow.

For online coordination, please all keep the progress page up to date.

So... you think this would be a cool event? That is great! A good way to start is to review these pages (this concept page, the timeline linked above and the post mortem of last year), to review the progress table for your country (here) and to subscribe to the mailing list and introduce yourself there. If there is a chapter in your country, definitely approach them too and see if they are interested in running this.